


Go Back to your Playpen

by windfallswest



Series: Dirty Dancing [2]
Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Kid Fic, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 11:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1303954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfallswest/pseuds/windfallswest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short tag, more like a collection of drabbles,  to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1206019">In This Corner...</a>. What happens when Harry gets back to Chicago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Back to your Playpen

"Hey, what's going on?"

"Oooh, your little baby! Let me see, let me see." Mrs Spunklecrief started hobbling towards us from where she'd been directing the procession of movers loading boxes into a van.

I shook off my confusion and hurried over before she could get far. Michael, hefting a load of baby clothes he and Charity had pressed on me, hung back and waited patiently. Maggie gurgled up at her from the sling, making baby faces and grabbing arthritic fingers.

"Hello, baby! What a girl. I am so glad I see you before I leave. What is name?"

"Maggie—uh, leave?" I asked stupidly.

"I sell building, move to assisted living out in suburbs."

"What?" I yelped, then glanced guiltily at Maggie, who had for once not seized on the opportunity to go off like a foghorn.

"Don't worry, you will like new owner. Is good man, a police officer."

"But—you—you're leaving? You sold the building Missus S?" I added, a little more loudly. Mrs Spunklecrief is a bit hard of hearing.

"All leases same. Detective Washington will take good care of you, Harriet."

I winced. "But what about you, Missus S?"

"Very good apartments; I have checked. I will have kitchen and sitting room, and there is even gym, and big room where they have bingo and dancing. Yes, we dance, little girl. Do you like to dance?" Mrs S cooed at Maggie, wiggling gloved fingers in her raptly interested face.

I blinked. "Sounds...nice."

"Yes, yes. You will come to visit me once I have settled in."

"Of course, Missus S."

"Good." Mrs Spunklecreif nodded firmly. "Now, you get poor child inside; is far too cold out here! You, young man, what you doing letting your ladies stand out in wind?" she harangued Michael, who jumped and looked a little guilty.

"What? I—Michael isn't my—he's a—" I just barely swallowed _married man_ ; Mrs Spunklecrief already thought I was a shameless harlot, "—friend! Just a friend. Uh, you give me a call when you're settled in, okay?"

We exchanged an awkward hug around Maggie in her sling, and Michael and I hustled down the stairs to my basement apartment. I was glad to see my wards were still intact. Mister, his timing as usual bordering on the psychic, rushed inside as soon as I got the door open, slamming me in the legs as he went. I was happy to note that I was no longer quite as unstable as I had been during the last months of my pregnancy.

Someone, probably Murphy or one of the Alphas, had been down and shovelled and salted the stairs and stoop. Murphy had stopped by to visit me at the Carpenters' the day after Christmas and reassured me she'd been looking after Mister. No surprise there: ever since my first vanishing act a few months ago, Murphy had taken it upon herself to stop by my apartment every couple of days if she hadn't heard from me directly. I had given her a talisman that let her through my wards, so I guess I'd been asking for it.

I murmured a few words of pseudo-Latin to light the candles I use instead of electric lights. I am not a weepy girl, but I almost broke down crying just from sheer relief when I crossed my own threshold. I felt like I'd been away for years. While I got a fire going in the hearth, Michael made another trip to his truck for the baby stuff Eb had pressed on me before we all decamped.

Eb was my grandfather, and he'd never _told_ me. He'd taken me in, saved my life in more ways than one, and he'd never _told_ me. Yeah, he'd been there for me, and I'd come to consider him family, a foster-father of sorts, like Justin had been before he betrayed Elaine and me. But he'd let me go on thinking I was an orphan, completely alone in the world. He'd more than known my mother; he'd raised her. And he'd denied me that.

He was still denying me that. Hell's bells, no one would talk to me about my own mother, and it pissed me off. But it was hard to look at that box full of little wooden toys Eb had probably made himself and hold onto my resentment. I thought of my mother playing with them as a child, of Eb carving them by his own hearth while a woman I'd never even imagined sat beside him, her belly rounding. I wanted to know what had happened to her, what her name had been, what she looked like.

"Thinking deep thoughts?" Michael interrupted my reverie.

I looked up to see he'd carried in the baby bag, the Christmas presents, and two fardles of firewood. Hell's bells.

"Probably the dam—darned hormones." I looked down at my little Maggie and smiled. This generation, I was determined, was going to grow up with a family, not a mystery.

After I finally persuaded Michael that yes, I was fine, he should go home now and take care of his own family, the first thing I did was take Maggie downstairs for Bob to check out.

I'd been feeding Bob medical texts along with his porn, since I was death to all ultrasound machines and while Butters was a nice guy, there is a big difference between a medical examiner and an obstetrician. It had also occurred to me that, with the amount of damage I took in the course of my job, it wouldn't hurt to have an in-house medical consultant. And all griping about being a Spirit of Intellect, not a midwife, dammit, aside, Bob had been kind of disturbingly interested in the whole process.

But that wasn't why I was bringing Maggie down now. I—and by I, I mean the Carpenters and I—had had her in to the hospital for her shots and the paperwork and all. Apparently everything was normal, despite the constant, incensed yowling. Charity had made a prim comment or two about how of course my kid would have a big mouth. Eb had said almost exactly the same thing; what was it with people?

"Is there anything? Can you tell?" I asked.

"Hold your horses," Bob told me. "Hm."

" _Bob_."

"Well, she looks okay to me."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure as I can be. I told you before, she was warded real good in there. "

I leaned forward to peer around at Maggie, whom I was holding upright for Bob to examine. She was waving her arms at the skull, entranced by Bob's flickering eye-lights; I frowned.

"So she's not affected at all."

"I see demonic influence in your head; none in hers," Bob confirmed.

I sighed relief. "I don't suppose you've had any new thoughts on how to get him out of my head."

"Sorry, boss."

_Careful, you'll hurt my feelings._

_Good_ , I thought back savagely, and slammed that mental door.  
__ __ __

Upstairs, thoughts of demonic demi-possessions lost out to the more immediate needs of a newborn baby. She had to be fed, changed, and washed. Then I had to change my shirt because Maggie burped herself all over the one I was wearing, and I forgot to shield myself appropriately.

I brought the box of baby clothes into my bedroom and started rearranging my dresser. Maggie was lying in the cradle Michael had made for her, trying to decide if Mister sniffing her nose rated another aria of screams.

I tend to think of myself as being a solitary person. Not out of personal inclination, you understand, so much as circumstance: my job, my being a wizard, and, okay, some bad experiences. I never got the hang of casual relationships, maybe because of what I had with Elaine. Maybe because of how it ended. There were precious few romantic interludes of any description between Elaine and Hawk; none at all since.

So it was profoundly moving for me to look around my apartment and see the evidence of other people in my life, of their caring and generosity. There was an iron guard in front of the fireplace, hooked into the wall as part of Charity's efforts at baby-proofing the place. She'd put little plastic latches through the cupboard handles in my kitchen nook, too, and tutted over my overloaded bookshelves.

Everyone had gotten together and thrown me a shower a few weeks ago. Michael had made the rocker-cradle; Charity had put together a quilted version of those baby straight-jackets you're supposed to use nowadays instead of blankets. On request, Fix and Lily—the Summer Knight and Summer Lady—had brought a sheet of fabric of the same unicorn-hair silk that had played such a significant role in Maggie's conception; I'd asked Eb to send up some wool from his sheep and quilted the lot using thread twisted with strands of my own hair for added oomph, plus refined versions of the protective sigils I'd inked onto my duster to create a bullet-proof, impact-cushioning baby-sling.

From Murphy, there had been a pacifier and some toys, including, because she is a dick, a large novelty pacifier with _Harry_ written on the mouth-guard. Ha, ha. The Alphas had, perhaps inevitably, brought a selection of children's books, most notably a copy of _Grimm's Fairy Tales_. Wise-ass college kids. I told them all they'd better stop snickering and start reading up.

The Carpenters had loaded me down to the point where I was starting not to attach irony to Charity's name: Christmas gifts, old baby paraphernalia, clothes, toys. Before Michael gave me the cradle, I'd just been going to pad a drawer with old tee-shirts.

I reached down and rescued Maggie from Mister, who had started licking her face. She looked up at me with dark eyes I didn't dare look back into for too long, tiny and ridiculous-looking and perfect.

It hit me, all of a sudden, and I had to sit down. I was home. I was home and safe, except I wasn't safe at all, and I had a baby to look after. How had this _happened_? It had been happening for months, but the reality was only now setting in. This wasn't just my feet swelling and learning to manoeuvre with a beach-ball sticking out of my stomach. This was a tiny little human being, already putting energy out into the world, changing it, even if only in this small, dark corner.

Curious, I extended my magical senses; I hardly needed them to feel the bond. Energy swirled around and between us almost as freely as it had when Maggie still slept beneath my heart. Okay, shadow-boxed beneath my heart: Maggie obviously had an exceptional intuitive understanding of fighting dirty. She must have inherited it from Hawk, because I mostly just flail a lot and bang at things until I have enough limbs free to run away. Clearly, there was something to this evolution business. I grinned broadly down at my personal contribution to the betterment of the species.

Maggie, of course, chose that moment to start wailing.

On the other hand, maybe White Council HQ in Edinburgh could use a new air-raid warning siren. There was a war on, after all.

I have never respected Charity Carpenter more than I did those first weeks, with the few, dimly-firing neurons I had left. She had made it all look so _easy_ ; I'd thought I'd taken note of how she'd done everything—I was intelligent; I was observant; I was a freaking _wizard_ , used to thinking on my feet.

Sleep deprivation is an incredibly effective tactic. The human body needs sleep. No one is quite sure why; but after a couple days, your memory starts going to shit, you get clumsy, and stupid, and you start losing the ability to tell the good ideas from the bad ideas—believe me: I know.

The inability to sleep shows up occasionally as a genetic disease; they don't have a cure for it. It starts with paranoia and panic attacks, then hallucinations. Once you stop sleeping entirely, you have on average about nine months of rapid weight loss, followed by catatonic dementia and death. The whole process usually takes about a year and a half; some people hold out for as long as three years; some are dead within seven months.

I was pretty sure I wouldn't last that long.

Maggie. Wouldn't. Sleep. The books all said that she was supposed to be spending at least half the day unconscious; but there was no way she was, or I would have been much better rested. You'd think it wouldn't fill all twenty-four hours out of the day. I mean, it wasn't a huge repertoire: I had to feed her, burp her, change her, bathe her, dress her. I was breastfeeding, so there was no formula to screw around with, just the least sexy thing that has ever happened to my nipples. At least when she was attached, she was _quiet_.

Intellectually, I know she had to be sleeping _some_. It's possible that I was just too punchy to register when it happened. I have vague memories of staring at her little face, mesmerised by the way it scrunched up and how her minuscule fists twitched. I sort of lost track of time for a while there.

The windows were snowed under, and I'd never reset my watch after my adventure with Marcone in the Nevernever. Someone—Murphy or my faerie cleaning crew, I wasn't sure which—had filled my previously bare cupboards with groceries, so I didn't have to go out for those. I don't think I stepped foot outside for at least a week, and then only because I had to take the garbage out. When I came back in, the faerie cleaning service had put everything back in order and done the laundry, including the stack of cloth diapers. In that instant, I was willing to take back everything I'd ever said about faeries, and mentally promised to start remembering my Seelie housekeepers in my weekly pizza order.

Those first couple weeks I managed, mostly, by never putting Maggie down. The fact that my apartment was the size of a postage stamp was an unexpected bonus: there was no room for me to lose anything, or get too far away from anything I needed, including the baby. If I needed to do something to Maggie, I held her. Otherwise, she was in the sling. I rocked her, I walked with her; since I didn't remember many lullabies, I sang Queen albums and bar songs instead, some of which I'd learned from Eb, and the rest of which I'd learned from Bob—the result of drinking with him down in my lab after about a dozen too many near-death experiences—and went through almost my entire economy-sized bottle of Tylenol. I somehow managed to drag us both up to the Carpenters' for Sunday dinners; I don't remember much about the first one except that I passed out on the couch as soon as someone took Maggie out of my arms.

The first time Maggie slept more than two hours at a stretch, I woke up in one of my arm chairs with a crick in my neck but my head miraculously cleared. I looked down at Maggie, and had the presence of mind to realise that she was still asleep before I did something stupid like breath too deeply. Stars and stones.

I straightened, very slowly and carefully, and waited for Maggie to wake up and scream reveille. Nothing. Then I stood up.

I blinked, trying to think of what came next. Eventually, I went into the bedroom, where my twin bed was still more or less made, and laid Maggie in her cradle.

Leaving the door open, not that there was any way I could have missed Maggie upset—the whole boarding house could probably hear her; I winced guiltily—I took a shower, barely even minding the cold since it meant finally being _clean_. By the time I'd towelled off and dressed, I felt almost like a human being again. I'd stopped wearing shirts at some point, since it meant not fighting with complicated devices like buttons or changing every time I got barfed on, and no one was around to call me on it anyway. Most of my pants didn't zip up all the way yet either, but on the other hand they were in no danger of falling down.

Maggie, who had evidently inherited my dreadful timing, woke up just as the coffee finished percolating and the eggs finished cooking. I did remember to take the pan off the burner, but by the time Her Royal Highness was appeased, it had all gone cold.

I shovelled down the eggs anyway and reheated the coffee. When I cracked the door in case Mister had gotten over his most recent fit of jealousy and was ready to come back in, the clear light and air of a winter afternoon was a shock. I felt like I'd just stepped out of Faerie again.

I bundled up Maggie, myself, and the trash to drop the latter off and pick up my mail. There was an unfamiliar black man by the boxes, doing something to one of them with a screwdriver. The new landlord? I tried to remember what Mrs Spunklecrief had said his name was. I tried to remember if I'd sent in my rent. Hell's bells, I couldn't even have told you what _month_ we were in.

"Hi," the probably-my-landlord said when I just stood there, staring at him in a manner that suggested my brain was maybe not as recovered from the baby-assault as I'd thought at first. Three hours' sleep had been nice, but I was probably overestimating its recuperative powers.

He had an easy smile, and his teeth showed up very white against skin the same colour as the dark chocolate I stock in my lab. He had aged the way some black men do, his hair and beard going from grey to white, but barely wrinkled at all and with good posture and range of movement. He was dressed casually but stylishly, black wool coat and ascot cap over slacks and a sweater, with what looked like a cashmere scarf. I could see his leather boots had been well-maintained.

I shook my head clear. Right. There were things adults did when greeting each other. "Hi."

I watched him finish reattaching the little flag and slip the screwdriver into his coat pocket. He offered me his hand, giving me a brief glance up and down, taking in my height (I had six inches on him), showy duster, and baby before looking up to meet my eyes with something almost like amusement. "Guess you'd be Harry Dresden."

I shook his hand but ducked his gaze. "Yup."

His smile stretched into a grin. "Neal Washington. We spoke on the phone last week."

"Ah..." Whups. This was entirely possible: I dimly remembered fielding a couple of phone calls, although I couldn't for the life of me tell you who from. "Of course. I've, er, been a bit preoccupied."

"I'll bet." Washington's attention slid down to Maggie, his face softening. "Is that your fault? I think so, babe."

"Her name's Maggie." I offered to let him hold her while I retrieved my mail. I'd noticed before that people always like holding babies. It's instinctive or hormonal or something: you will very rarely find an adult who'll turn down the opportunity. We're programmed to think the red-faced little shit-factories are irresistibly adorable so we don't smother them to stop the noise. Those are some strong damned instincts, let me tell you.

"Maggie, huh? Hi there little girl," Washington cooed. Maggie was both awake and not screaming, watching the New Person instead with blatant fascination.

Sure, she liked _him_. I was getting the distinct impression that Maggie was already deliberately making things difficult for me. I'd have much preferred for her to love me and categorically distrust the rest of the world, but that kind of paranoia was probably less than healthy. I stuffed the latest Best Buy catalogue and a couple envelopes that looked like they might contain Christmas cards into one of my duster's pockets and crossed my arms, giving the little fink the stink-eye.

"You two doing all right down there? Missus Spunklecrief told me you don't use the electricity," Washington tore himself away from an apparently riveted examination of all four square inches of baby visible through the winter layers.

"I blow out the lightbulbs so much it's not worth the trouble. The fireplace and the wood stove make up for it." More or less. But contained fires are definitely preferable to _on fire_ , which could happen with a more modern heating system if (when) I fried it. "I've lasted out more than one winter down there; it suits me."

Washington was paying entirely too much attention now; he was giving me the assessing-squinty look I usually got the first time I met a law-enforcement professional. "You're Dresden the magician, right?"

"My dad was the magician. I'm a wizard." I did not quite manage to try to suppress a scowl. "Missus S told me you were a cop."

"Detective Lieutenant, out of Calumet. Retired." It was my turn to look at Washington a little more carefully. Calumet was not the good part of town, to say the least. Washington had probably been undercover, though I guessed not for some years.

"Ever run into a PI, name of Nick Christian?" I asked, curious.

Washington nodded and said, "Couple times; not really my scene," which more or less confirmed my suspicions.

"I picked up the trade from him."

"And where'd you pick up the, ah, wizarding?" Washington asked. He hitched Maggie up a little and started swaying from side to side.

"Missouri," I said, because I wasn't about to bring up Iowa. I wasn't entirely certain what the mortal authorities had made of that mess, but if there had been a warrant or anything out for me as a result, it would have had to have come up by now. Still, I didn't go around directing official attention in that direction, retired or not.

Washington snorted, like magic was a pretty unlikely thing to find in Missouri. And, okay, I didn't have the exact figures, but per capita it probably didn't have the highest concentration of wizards or even practitioners on the continent. But hey, it's a lot more private than New York City, and the cost of living is way lower. Than Chicago, too. I am definitely an outlier among wizards.

"You've got Collin Murphy's oldest convinced you're worth listening to," Washington said. "Word is she's a serious kid."

"She's good people," I agreed. "Tell you what, give me a shout when you lock yourself out sometime and I'll give you a demonstration."

I reached for Maggie, and Washington yielded her back with good grace. He still had his assessment-face on.

"Long as you pay your rent and don't start sacrificing farm animals or dancing naked in the back yard, I don't care what you put on your business cards."

I pasted a smile on my face, too tired to do this argument right now. "Good meeting you, Detective Retired."

Washington laughed and stepped out of the way, heading back towards the front door.  
__ __ __

I didn't get rid of the bonsai.

I was going to, but it's so rare to see Bob excited about anything that doesn't involve either magic or nudity that I relented. According to him, it was a sequoia, same as they have out in California. You know, the ones that grow three hundred feet tall and take a dozen people joining hands to go all the way around. I didn't know whether to be offended or what. On the one hand, it was maybe kind of cool. On the other, it would be just like Marcone to send it as a message. I could see him with it in whatever immaculate chrome-and-glass high-powered office he used to snake people in with, the biggest tree in the world sitting in a tiny pot. Sculpted. Contained. Controlled.

I thought about it, the only green thing in that office (except his eyes), all asymmetrical, organic curves. It was the only living thing in my concrete box of a lab, depending where you pegged Bob on the 'alive' meter. Maybe he'd been getting lonely. Huh.

It turned out to be a good thing, though, because it gave Bob something to do for the first few weeks of Maggie's life, when I was being run off my feet by nine pounds of immobile and pre-verbal child. Which was not to say silent.

My new landlord gave me a break on the rent until I could get back to work. The next time it snowed, I beat him outside with the shovel. I hadn't actually thought about it; it was just something I did. My old landlady and the upstairs tenants were all getting up there in years, and since I occasionally did things like get my door broken down by demons and have vampires try to blow me up, I tried to make back points where I could.

Washington wasn't quite decrepit yet, but I was still half his age. He didn't challenge me to a ritual measuring contest for the shovel. Instead, he brought me out a mug of hot chocolate—I missed coffee, but I couldn't risk any of the caffeine ever, _ever_ getting through to Maggie, dear god—and I permitted him to hold the kid when I got back to business.  
__ __ __

I started going back to the office again. Maggie seemed to enjoy the change of scenery, so there was that. Also, I had to keep paying the bills.

I'd given up on singing to Maggie fairly early on; the lullabies weren't accomplishing much on the way of soothing, maybe because my singing voice wasn't anything to write home about. I couldn't cheat with a radio, so whenever work was slow (I know, can you believe it?) I read to her from my stack of used paperbacks. It felt better anyhow, more personal. Also, less repetitious.

Bob complained bitterly about the noise and the neglect, but I distracted him with plant life, a few wild-ass ideas, and a _Playboy_ or two—you would not believe the looks you get for buying a _Playboy_ while carrying a baby—and it was like it had never happened. What're a few weeks to an immortal?

Murphy called me on short notice and told me I looked like crap when I showed up, which meant she'd missed me: Murphy has spent too much time among men. A few of the dimmer bulbs in SI boggled when they saw me toting Maggie around at crime scenes, like they hadn't realised I was pregnant or something.

I didn't take Maggie quite everywhere: when I knew things were going to get hairy, I'd leave her with the Carpenters or Billy's crew, who were all in love with Maggie from game nights, which I finally started going to again.

The Carpenters, having got their aggressively inclusive claws into me, were not about to let me escape. I found that sometime when I wasn't looking I had become a permanent addition to Sunday dinner (I still drew the line at Mass, though).

"Why aren't there more positive parental characters in literature? The hero's parents are always dead. And if they're not dead, they're marrying some twisted bimbo. Or they _are_ twisted bimbos," I complained to Michael one weekend while the food coma was still wearing off.

Michael cleverly concealed a smile by aiming it at Maggie. "Well, Jesus had two parents."

"Technically, Jesus had three parents," I pointed out. "Unless you want to call the Almighty as a deadbeat dad."

"He provided. And you can hardly call Mary a bimbo," Michael argued.

Hee. I'd gotten Michael to say 'bimbo'. "I dunno; does the Immaculate Conception count as extra-marital sex?"

"Since the it refers to the birth of Mary, no, it does not," Michael's wife Charity said, dooming the conversation to a swift death. She had on her idle-hands-are-the-devil's-playthings expression, which I'd learned to recognise this past year.

"Whew, smell that, someone needs changed," I said.

Michael, who was currently holding Maggie, confirmed his status as Nicest Guy Alive by saying, "Let's go with your mom, huh, Margaret?"

Gurgling unintelligibly, Maggie rolled her head around to stare at me with dark, liquid eyes. I blinked.

"Oh." There was undoubtedly a silly-stupid look on my face.

Charity laughed at me. "Yes, they start doing that after a while."

I waved awkwardly. "Hey over there."

Maggie looked from me back up to Michael. Her face scrunched up and emitted the pre-klaxon burble of discomfort: the Kodak Moment was over, and it was back to battle stations.  
__ __ __

The second-floor tenants, the Willoughbys, moved out to a ranch house in the suburbs only a couple of months after Mrs Spunklcrief left. Once I'd gotten back in the habit of washing daily again, I'd visited her with Maggie just like I'd promised. Mrs S seemed to be having the time of her life.

The couple who replaced them had one daughter who was about thirteen and another in the Air Force. Mr Baxingdale pruned back the lilacs that had all but taken over the back yard since Mr Spunklecrief's death a handful of years ago. Mrs Baxingdale grilled things and invited Detective Washington and me to eat with them. Caroline asked if I needed a babysitter.

I didn't take her up on it; all the approved babysitters either had teeth as long as my finger or were otherwise heavily armed. But it was still nice bordering on _Leave It to Beaver_ that she offered.

Every month or so, John Marcone sent me something he had to know I wouldn't keep, just to be obnoxious; or he'd show up somewhere, oh, just _coincidentally_ , and bother me. He didn't keep to a regular schedule, I assumed also to be obnoxious. I couldn't figure out what he was up to; we both knew he didn't seriously expect to buy me anymore, but I generally had more important things to worry about than the zoo exhibit that was John Marcone's head.

Except that nothing to do with John Marcone was insignificant. But that's another story.

__ __ __

It was a hot day just after midsummer. It had gone off without me getting so much as a postcard, which I always counted as a win. Maggie was about six months old, crawling around like greased lightning. Poor Mister hadn't met anything that would chase him in years. I was out in the back courtyard giving the washer and dryer some room and enjoying the newly-reclaimed space.

So of course Detective-Retired Washington chose just then to come out. I could tell Washington still hadn't made up his mind what to think of me. I'd made no bones about my chosen profession, but I'd also managed to avoid having it follow me home in the conspicuous, property-damaging way since he'd moved in.

I was wearing a pair of cut-offs that had happened after a potion exploded all over me and a tank top with straps so thin they barely covered my bra straps, not that things ever actually line up that way. It was June and it was laundry day, all right? Not that I have problems with my body—it keeps my brains up off the pavement; what else do you want?—but generally speaking I have more than one valid reason for dressing somewhat modestly most of the time. See above in re: potion exploding.

Or, for example, what I could see Washington taking in now. I'm sure he'd already noticed the ugly scar on my left hand where a faerie queen had impaled it with a letter-opener to make a point, and maybe the more innocuous one on my right forearm from gutting fish with Eb back when. The only thing wrong with my legs, aside from their being maybe a little skinny, was the massive werewolf bite on my left ankle. And no, I know what you're thinking, but werewolves don't actually work like that. It was complimented by a ragged line somewhat higher up on the my right leg where I'd been tagged by the claw of a scorpion the size of Mister.

The little circular scar on my hip where they'd dug out a small-calibre bullet after Round Two of the same fracas was about the only one my ensemble hid; but I'd also caught bullets in both my shoulders at one point or another. Neither wound had been treated by a professional. Not that gunshot wounds weren't messy anyway.

I lifted my chin and withstood Washington's scrutiny. His eyes made their way back up to my face eventually and added my expression to his tally, not bothering to pretend he hadn't been looking. He shook his head, eyebrows popping up. "You sure you're not working undercover for the FBI or something, girl?"

I tried not to wince when he said 'FBI'. "I am pretty much the opposite of undercover." Under siege, now...  
__ __ __

I left the kid with Eb for a week while I chased down a rogue sylph for Lily. I figured it put us square for the extra work her folk had been doing at the apartment. Also, tornados were enough of a problem without them running around and aiming themselves at people.

It was a peace offering of sorts between me and Eb. He was still a closed-mouthed bastard, but he was family, and _I_ was determined not to walk away from that. I could wear him down eventually, if I stuck around; but if I locked him out, I'd never know, now would I?

And, underneath it all, I still trusted him. Eb might have been about a hundred times more paranoid than I'd given him credit for, but he'd given me a safe place, and space to get my head straight. I'd been pretty screwed up when I came to him, not just from what I'd done to Justin and what I thought I'd done to Elaine, but from six years of living with Justin; Eb showed me what it meant to be a wizard, not just some schmuck who used magic. How to be a human being, really. Finding out he was my grandfather didn't change anything I'd learned from him.

I wanted to have a long talk with Eb, but as soon as I'd dealt with Summer's rogue storm sylph, I got word that something hinky was going on back in Chicago.

The poor Beetle was never going to be the same again.


End file.
